What We Don't See
by SuperheroGirlX
Summary: Bobby chose Rogue over her and Kitty is having some trouble adjusting. But while she was falling for Bobby was she missing out on someone else?
1. Hanging On

_Summary_: Bobby chose Rogue over her and Kitty is having some trouble adjusting. But while she was falling for Bobby was she missing out on someone else?

_Dedicated to_: AlbinoMonkeyC, AGL, theshadowcat, Teroglahn, Raykura-Kura, and falcored. Thanks for reviewing!

_A/N_: No real plot here. This was supposed to be a one-shot, but it got a little long.

_Disclaimer: _the X-Men are the property of Marvel Comics and the movies belong to Fox. I am not a part of Marvel or Fox, so I own nothing.

**What We Don't See (When We're Looking the Wrong Way)**

Kitty frowned at her reflection in the window and then looked past it to the yard again. Bobby and Rogue - or Marie as she wanted to be called now - were sitting hand in hand on a bench, enjoying the nice weather, unknowingly torturing Kitty. It was her own fault for falling for Bobby when she knew he was devoted to Marie. Some part of her knew that it wasn't all her fault. He had seemed interested. He had led her on, only to leave her alone and forgotten.

_I'm obsessing about it again_, Kitty realized. She stood up a little too quickly and stalked off to get ready for their danger room session. She was dressed and ready to beat up some holograms before the rest of the team showed up, so she dropped into a chair in the briefing room to wait for the others.

No sooner had she sat down than Piotr walked in and stood stiffly and silently against the wall. Kitty didn't try to start a conversation with him. He wasn't the type to carry on a conversation. Logan appeared next and he was just as conversational as Piotr. Storm and Beast broke the silence, walking in smiling and laughing about something a few minutes before five o'clock. The group had to wait another fifteen minutes for Bobby, because he was late as usual. He was always late now that Marie was cured and not a member of the X-Men.

"You're late," Piotr said gruffly when Bobby walked in. This surprised everyone, since this was as close to confrontational as the big steel-plated Russian had ever gotten.

"Yeah, sorry," Bobby said, though he didn't seem very apologetic.

Kitty felt a twinge in her heart. It wasn't just the fact that Bobby had chosen Marie over her that ate at her; Bobby had been her friend and now he wasn't even that. He didn't talk to her anymore and he avoided being in the same room with her whenever possible.

They had started the Danger Room and Kitty was only half paying attention to the dangers around her when large metallic arms yanked her off her feet just seconds before a cannonball pulverized the ground she'd been standing on. Before she knew what was happening, Kitty had been set down and Piotr was striding forward, ignoring the obstacles before him. He jerked Bobby around and snatched a fistful of his icy shirtfront.

"What are you doing?!" Bobby yelled.

"You are trying so hard to disregard her that you almost got her killed! You are not doing your duty!"

Clearly oblivious to the near-death experience Kitty had just had, Bobby said, "What?!"

Storm had seen the commotion and was on her way over to separate them now. Kitty knew she should have tried to pry them apart, but she felt rooted to the floor. While it was true that the cannonball would have squashed her like a pancake in a real battle, the Danger Room had safe guards against actually killing anyone. It would have still hurt, but instead of killing her, it would have just stunned her and given her a major headache the next morning. Piotr's outrage seemed just a little unnecessary.

Storm reached the boys a minute later, but had some trouble reasoning with them and even more trouble pulling Piotr off of Bobby. Kitty finally decided to end the insanity and managed to shuffle over to them. She put a cautious hand on Piotr's steel arm, but didn't try to pull him away. Instead she waited until he looked down at her and then said softly, "Just let him go."

Slowly, reluctantly, Piotr's fist unclenched and Bobby stumbled backward. "What was that?!" Bobby demanded to know, brushing the wrinkles out of his uniform.

Somewhere up ahead Wolverine and Beast must have completed the objective, because the scene around them dissolved into a gray room again. Storm tried to get the story out of them, but Bobby was the only one talking and he didn't know anything anyway. Storm figured this out soon enough and turned to Kitty and Piotr for answers, but Piotr had returned to his usual stoic self and Kitty was in too miserable of a mood to try explaining it.

"Sorry Storm," Kitty apologized, her hand still on Piotr's arm. "We'll talk later?" She pulled lightly on Piotr's arm until he powered down and followed her out of the Danger Room. When they were back upstairs Kitty stopped him and said, "Ok, what was that?"

"Nothing."

"Bobby didn't mean to hurt me," Kitty tried to tell Piotr. "He just wasn't paying attention. That's why we have training."

Piotr gave her a pitying look for some reason and walked away. Bobby brushed past her on his way back to his room and that was the last thing Kitty could handle that day. She ran. She ran right out the back door and past the bench Bobby and Marie had been sitting in just an hour ago and stopped at the fountain.

For a while she just stood there staring at it. Not really at it, but at the past. It was a day everyone would remember as the day they buried the professor, but Kitty would remember it as the day Bobby was at his sweetest. That was the day that she was hanging onto, more than any other day. That was the memory that came to her whenever she saw Bobby and Marie together, because that day it had been Bobby and Kitty.

Kitty sat down on the rim of the fountain and swirled the water with her finger. That day, the fountain had looked the same. When Bobby dragged her out there with her skates and a grin, the water had been liquid, like it was now. But just by dipping his finger in it, Bobby had frozen it solid.

"You're it Artie!" someone yelled, breaking through Kitty's thoughts. A second later someone crashed into her and sent her toppling to the ground.

"Sorry Kitty, sorry!" he apologized profusely while he helped her to her feet. "I'm really sorry!"

Seeing who it was, Kitty smiled. "It's ok Jimmy. I wasn't paying attention."

Jimmy narrowed his eyes at her. "You're not smiling right," he told her. "That's how the doctors used to smile, like they didn't really mean it."

Jimmy, or Leech, had the ability to cancel out the powers of those mutants around him. Because of this, Worthington Labs had snatched him up and had a team of doctors perform tests on him to come up with the now infamous "mutant cure."

Kitty stopped pretending to smile and dropped tiredly onto the rim of the fountain. "Sorry. I'm just not having the best day."

Jimmy sat down next to her, ignoring the shouts from his friends to come back to the game. "What's wrong?"

Kitty looked at the boy. Brown hair grew where the doctors had once shaved him bald and he wore a bright red shirt, when once he had only been allowed to wear white. Jimmy was adjusting nicely to life at the institute, which was considerably different from his life at Worthington Labs. There, he had lived in a bare, white room and worn clean, white clothes. His only visitors were the doctors and the occasional curious beaurocrat. He spent his days playing video games and staring out the little window at the world.

Now his room was overly colorful, with a rich oak door that he could lock and unlock at his desire. He wore bright clothes, like the blindingly red shirt he had on today. He had friends now who came to drag him out of his room in the middle of the day - where he was staring out his floor-to-ceiling window - to play tag or hide and seek.

"Is it Bobby?" Jimmy asked. Sometimes he was so perceptive Kitty wondered if he had telepathic powers too. She wasn't going to have this discussion with him though. She couldn't, not without crying. Jimmy realized she wasn't going to talk, so he soldiered on. "You know, I used to have a crush on you." Kitty's head snapped in his direction. "'Cause you saved my life and you were really nice to me when I came here and you're pretty and smart and you -" Jimmy broke off and grinned. "Well, you're just really nice. But you weren't interested."

"Jimmy," Kitty started to apologize.

"It's ok. Actually, it turns out that Jubilee kind of liked me, but I didn't know because I liked you."

"Jubilee, really? Good for you Jimmy," Kitty said with almost sincere cheer.

"Yeah, I guess sometimes you just get so centered on one person, you don't really notice other people."

Kitty thought about that for a second, but didn't take it the way Jimmy intended. Instead, she thought, _Yeah, Bobby's just so focused on Rogue, he forgot I'm here. He'd at least be my friend if I reminded him. We could at least be friends again._ Kitty stood up enthusiastically. "Thanks Jimmy, that's good advice. I'm gonna go find Bobby. I'll see ya later, k?"

"No, Kitty..." Jimmy protested, but she was already gone. "...that's not what I meant," he muttered to himself.

---

_A/N_: K, so the story's actually all done (three chapters total) as of this posting, but since I'm so ahead of myself this time, I'm going to let myself be a little demanding. So, I'll post the next chapter of this fic when I get...five reviews. Or a week from now. Whichever comes first. Thanks for reading, even if you don't review. I appreciate it!

--X


	2. Drawing

_Dedicated to_: lets go for life wont wait and Bobby's Icequeen, because they reviewed! Hurray for you!

_A/N_: K, so here's part 2 a day earlier than promised, because I don't see myself getting those five reviews and I decided not to wait for them.

_Disclaimer_: the X-Men are the property of Marvel Comics and the movies belong to Fox. I am not a part of Marvel or Fox, so I own nothing.

**What We Don't See**

Luckily Marie had her weekly check-up now, so Bobby was alone when Kitty found him.

"Hey Bobby," she said cheerfully

Bobby looked up from the computer. "Oh, uh...Hi Kitty."

Kitty suddenly had no idea what to say. "So...Sorry about Piotr today. I don't know what he got so upset over."

"It's ok, it wasn't your fault." Bobby's eyes uneasily scanned the empty room around them, stopping on the door every few minutes.

"Yeah, so I just wanted to know if you maybe wanted to go to a movie or something sometime."

"Kitty," Bobby sighed.

"Not like a date. Rogu- er...Marie," she corrected herself, "could come too. And maybe Jimmy and whoever else wants to go. It'd be fun."

Bobby stopped looking around the room and stood up. "Kitty," he sighed again.

"It wouldn't be a date," Kitty explained quickly. "I know you're with Rogue. I just thought we could be friends again, you know?"

Bobby put two cold hands on her shoulders and looked down at her sadly and a little sympathetically. "Kitty, I'm sorry I made you think I was interested, and I'm sorry I've been ignoring you lately, and I like you as a friend..." This would have excited Kitty if she didn't hear in his voice what was coming next. "But I don't really think we should hang out a lot. I couldn't do that to Marie. Even if we were just friends." His hands slid off her shoulders. "I'm sorry."

"But, I don't...I mean, we were friends before..."

"I'm sorry, Kitty." He looked genuinely sorry. "I've gotta go."

And he slid past her and out the door, leaving Kitty alone. Glad the room was empty, Kitty dropped into the seat Bobby had just left and brought her knees up to her chest, feeling ridiculous. There was no reason for her to feel this way. She and Bobby had never dated or even talked about dating. He had always been with Rogue, which just made Kitty a terrible person, on top of being pathetic.

Rogue shouldn't even have lived there anymore. She wasn't a mutant; she'd gotten the cure. She should have moved out of the school.

Kitty stood up suddenly. She caught herself thinking horrible things like that every once in a while and it always helped to go for a walk, so she stomped straight through the wall, hoping the fresh air would clear her head. The backyard was far too noisy though, with Jimmy and his friends playing tag, another group of people playing basketball, and a few flight-powered students enjoying the sun from higher altitudes. Syrin let out an ear-splitting shriek when a football zipped just inches past her head. She quickly clamped her mouth shut and apologized embarrasedly to everyone when they had uncovered their ears.

Shaking her head to stop her ears from ringing, Kitty headed around the side of the building, which should have been deserted on a day like today. This side of the school was cast in shadow, making it a little too cool and dark to be enjoyable. What it lacked in sunshine and warmth, it more than made up for in solitude, which was what Kitty was looking for. She sat down in the grass with her back pressed against the cool brick and closed her eyes. The ivy that grew up the side of the building rustled until it adjusted to her weight.

For a while it was quiet and the silence filled Kitty's head, thankfully leaving no room for thought. Then a different rustling reached her ears. Kitty opened her eyes and scanned the shadows for the source of the sound, which wasn't exactly a rustling. Whatever it was, it wasn't in her field of vision, so - despite all the warnings about curiosity and cats - Kitty went in search of it. It wasn't hard to find. The sound was coming from a 6'6'' Russian, bent over an easel. The rustling was actually the scratching that his brush made against the canvas. Piotr was painting the ivy, a corner of one of Xavier's trademark floor-to-ceiling windows was painted on the edge of the canvas.

"That's really good," Kitty said.

She noticed a notebook laying in the grass at his feet and picked it up. Piotr didn't object, he just went on painting. The notebook was full of pencil sketches, some were bubbly and cartoonish, but most were realistic. These drawings were mostly of people. In one, Storm sat at her desk with an exaggerated pile of papers stacked in front of her. Another showed a door's eye view of Beast's International Relations class, followed by a rough sketch of Wolverine holding combat practice and Angel checking a student's vitals down in the infirmary.

After a few more pages of professional settings, Piotr had apparently moved outside for some recreation. The next fifteen pages were filled with sketches in varying detail of kids having fun. But between the shots of flying students and laughing friends was a very detailed picture of Kitty and Jimmy sitting on the fountain just an hour ago. Piotr had captured her fake smile and she noticed that it really did look forced. It didn't reach her eyes. Jimmy was grinning next to her, his hand out in a gesture as he talked. Kitty looked up from the picture at Piotr, who was still silently painting the wall. He had obviously been watching her closely when she was talking to Jimmy, but she hadn't even noticed him. He couldn't have been very far to get all that detail in her and Jimmy's faces.

"These are really good."

"Thank you," Piotr said politely. "Professor Munroe asked me to paint some scenes of life around campus for the school's new brochure."

"Oh, cool... Hey, Pete?" Kitty said hesitantly. "Why did you grab Bobby back in the Danger Room?"

Before he could answer, Jimmy found them and excitedly interrupted. "Kitty! D'you wanna come ice skating? The warm weather is making everyone want to ice skate again. A bunch of us are going, you should come! It'll be fun."

Kitty had dropped Piotr's notebook on the words 'ice skating' and she took half a step back, but Jimmy didn't notice in his excitement.

"Hey Jimmy," Piotr interrupted, "why don't you go ask Storm if she wants to go. She hasn't been off campus in a while."

Jimmy looked from Piotr to Kitty, then back to Piotr. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, sure. I'll see if I can drag her out of her office. Um, see ya later Kitty! Bye Pete!" He left them in silence again, with not even the scratching of Piotr's paintbrush to interrupt Kitty's thoughts.

_"Kitty, get up. Come with me."_

_"But Storm told us to stay in our rooms."_

_Bobby grinned mischeivously. "Don't worry, we won't get caught. I mean, you _can _walk through walls, you know. Come on."_

"Kitty?" Piotr said and by the sound of his voice, not for the first time.

Kitty's eyes slowly came to focus back on the present. "Sorry, what?"

"Are you ok?" He looked concerned.

"Yeah," Kitty said bravely, "yeah, I'm fine."

Piotr didn't look convinced. "Hey, I'm done here, do you want to learn how to draw?"

"Sure," Kitty said indifferently. "What should I draw?"

Piotr looked uneasy now and his eyes drifted past her. "Actually, I was going to draw the graves next, but we don't have to do that."

"No," Kitty said quickly, "that sounds good. Let's draw them."

"Ok..." Piotr packed up his easel and the two trudged back to the backyard. In a secluded corner of the yard, shrouded in an inexplicable permanent sadness, were the graves of the professor and two of his first students. Actually, they were more like monuments, since only Jean had had an actual body to bury.

"Did Storm want you to draw these too?" Kitty asked as she sat down on the grass in front of the tombstones.

"No." He didn't offer a further explanation and Kitty didn't pry for one. Instead she leaned over to watch him draw. "The monuments should be easy, since they're just straight edges," he explained as he drew a rough outline of all three stones. Kitty copied him. "The professor's head is a little more difficult." He drew it effortlessly.

Kitty decided not to damage the professor's image with what she knew would be a terriblely egg-shaped drawing of him and they moved on. After he explained shading they drew separately and silently for another half hour. Kitty very carefully wrote the names on her sketch and then leaned over to compare her's to Piotr's. Her mouth fell open.

He had already finished the sketch he had been working on and torn it out of the notebook. It lay face up in the grass between them. Except for the lack of color, it was almost a perfect representation of the scene in front of them. While Kitty had focused solely on the graves, Piotr had drawn the flowers and well-kept bushes in the background too. The flame they kept perpetually lit at the base of the professor's monument was more fluid than Kitty's and he had even lightly included their shadows at the bottom of the page. She was speechless and that was nothing compared to the sketch he was working on now. That one made her want to cry.

This one had none of the detail of the first one and most people would probably argue that his first sketch was more accurate. They would have been wrong. This new sketch may have lacked the flowery background and extensive scenery of the first one, it may have been shaded more heavily than reality, but this only made it more realistic to Kitty. Looking from Piotr's current drawing to the one laying before her, Kitty actually believed the second one was more accurate. The first one, with it's beautiful scenery and flowers, was the one that looked unrealistic. Flowers and beauty had no place in the scene. They seemed to intrude on the solemn mood that was present in the air around the place.

That was what Piotr captured in the second drawing: the mood. It was dark and reflective and sad. When people came to visit the graves they didn't notice the perfectly trimmed bushes or the pretty purple and white flowers, all they saw were three clean gray stones. They floated in the mind, like Piotr's did in the middle of the page, and everything around them was fuzzy compared to the clarity of them. His drawing got progressively darker as it moved away from the center until it was black at the edges. It was a mind's eye view of the site and it was more perfect than the literal sketch in the grass.

Piotr closed the notebook as soon as his pencil left the page and he turned to look at Kitty's sketch. He started giving her feedback on it, but Kitty wasn't listening. She was remembering the memorial service for the professor. Whenever Kitty looked back on it, she always thought Storm should have brought in some clouds to give the day a more gloomy feel. But the day didn't need clouds, Kitty realized now, because the weather hadn't even registered in her mind anyway. Not then. Tornadoes could have been converging on them from all sides and Kitty doubted if she would have noticed anything except the professor's likeness on the newly placed block of stone. Bobby had been sitting right next to her and took her hand right when she needed it and somehow made her recognize him through the sadness. She had stupidly thought that meant something and didn't notice that his other hand was still firmly in Rogue's.

Suddenly, Kitty wasn't sure if the second sketch was better. It hid things and skewed things. Maybe they were supposed to see the flowers behind the graves to remind them that if they would just look up, they could see the school the professor had built where his ideas were still taught. Maybe, if Kitty had seen Rogue's hand, still gloved back then, it would have kept her from falling for Bobby the way she had.

Kitty interrupted whatever Piotr was saying to ask, "Which one is better?"

Not having heard her inner debate, Piotr was slightly confused. "Well," he said hesitantly, looking back down at her drawing, like he thought she was asking him to compare her sketch to his.

"No, which is better, this one -" she pointed to his first sketch - "or the interpretive one?"

"Um, well the other one was really just for me. If Storm wanted a sketch of the graves though, I'd give her the first one."

"Right, but is it better to see everything, even if it doesn't fit how you want it to, or is it ok to edit some things out?"

Piotr looked curiously at her and then stared into the flame at the base of the professor's monument thoughtfully. "I think," he said slowly, still staring into the fire, "you should know what you're editing out. In this drawing -" he opened the notebook to his second drawing - "I know what's in the darkness."

"But the darkness is what makes it moving," Kitty argued, "because it focuses all the attention on the tombs."

Piotr shook his head and said rationally, "It's moving because you know what's missing. You know there should be flowers and bushes, but they're gone. The flame's even out."

Kitty hadn't noticed until he said it, but the flame was indeed gone from the second sketch. A smokey tendril drifted up from it as the only indication that it had ever been lit.

"It's all the signs of life that are missing that make you only see the death and darkness."

Kitty realized that she was surprised by his argument, not because it didn't make sense, but because this was the most she had ever heard Piotr talk. She hadn't known he could be so thoughtful about things.

"If we look at your drawing," he said, placing her's between both of his, "we see the third option. My first one saw everything and the second omitted it on purpose. Yours omitted things because you didn't see them there, right?"

Kitty nodded. Was it possible that even seeing Rogue's hand in Bobby's wasn't seeing all there was to see? Was it possible that she had missed something important, not because she didn't want to see it, but because she had simply not thought to look for it?

---

_A/N_: Yes, I leave you here, but fear not! There is another chapter. Kitty just needs time to think about this. Another five reviews will get you her conclusion (it's rather long), otherwise you'll have to wait a week. To quote Captain Planet: "The choice is yours!"

Thanks for reading.

--X


	3. Turning Around

Dedicated to: cheerleaderchick (thank you, I hope it doesn't disappoint you), Shadowdancer9 (sorry again, I don't usually fish for reviews, but I thought I'd give it a try. Since it really didn't work anyway, I think this'll be the last time I do it)

A/N: Sorry to do this to you guys, but I redid the end and it just got WAY too long, so I split it up. This one's got some action in it.

Disclaimer: the X-Men are the property of Marvel Comics and the movies belong to Fox. I am not a part of Marvel or Fox, so I own nothing.

**What We Don't See**

Kitty had slept on it and now sat in her room with her incomplete sketch of the memorials taped to her mirror. She sat in front of it, intermittantly staring at the paper and then at herself, trying to find the missing flowers in her past. The day of the professor's memorial ceremony had been sunny and bright, but the perfect weather had been lost on the students, faculty, and guests of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. People had flown from all over the world to pay their respects to Charles Xavier, the man who had offered hope for mutants and humans everywhere. Storm had given an incredible speech, her first act as headmistress. As X-Men, Kitty and the others were given front row seats. Logan had been absent, but then public displays of grief weren't really his thing.

What Kitty always remembered about the service was Bobby taking her hand to comfort her, but now she was trying to look beyond that. Rogue had been sitting on Bobby's other side, her gloved fingers interlaced in his. Kitty really should have realized then that Bobby would never leave Rogue. He had been with her fairly happily and for quite a while before she had gotten the cure and the chances of his leaving her for Kitty were just never that likely. Rogue was a southern belle, beautiful and understanding - more so than most since she had the unique ability to absorb people's memories. She had traveled on her own and could take care of herself. She knew how hard life could be for mutants; she wasn't some naive girl. She was a little reserved because of her mutation, but she was ultimately the type of person other people wanted to be around. Even Kitty would have liked her under different circumstances.

While Bobby had sat holding Rogue's hand on one side and Kitty's on the other, Storm had reminded everyone of what a great person, leader, and friend Charles Xavier had been. Around her, people sat in various states of mourning. Beast had sat in dignified silence, allowing himself a sad frown. Next to him was Moira MacTaggert, who had flown all the way from Muir Island to be there. Rumors had arisen that she had once been engaged to the professor, but under the circumstances no one had felt like following up on that bit of gossip.

Kitty remembered reading the inscription:

Charles Xavier

Father Teacher Leader

and thinking that those three words didn't come close to defining all that the professor had been. He was a friend and a humanitarian and an idealist in the good sense of the word. He was too many things to fit on that block of stone. Kitty doubted engraving the entire exterior of the school would be enough to include all that Charles Xavier had been.

Kitty remembered knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that Scott was dead too and wondering what would become of the X-Men since both of their leaders were gone. Storm was still alive of course, but she had been new to the leadership position.

It had been a confusing time and before they really had time to process everything that had happened, Magneto struck and the X-Men were called away to face their most difficult battle ever: Magneto's army of disgruntled mutants against six X-Men and a couple dozen soldiers.

Kitty paused and stared at herself in the mirror. "Six?" she said out loud. Somehow that number sounded wrong, but she knew that those had been the odds. That number was burned into her brain by the sheer terror of it. "Six," she repeated, wondering what the glitch was in her memory that made her falter at that number. "Me, Bobby, Rogue, Storm, Logan, Beast..."

That was six. She even counted on her fingers just to be sure. But her mind still wouldn't get past that detail. Something wasn't right. Kitty's eyes drifted back to her sketch of the three graves, one for the professor, one for Scott, and one for Jean.

Jean's tomb had caused some controversy. Some were unhappy about her tomb being placed so close to Scott and Xavier's. She had killed them after all. Some hadn't even wanted to bury her on the school grounds at all. These complaints went largely unvoiced, however, since Logan's claws tended to pop out whenever anyone questioned Jean's burial.

"It was _Phoenix_," Logan insisted, "who killed Scott and Charles, not Jean."

So it didn't matter that Jean had killed Scott and the professor. And it didn't matter that she'd joined Magneto and turned most of the soldiers at Alcatraz into dust. It wasn't her. That memorial was for the Jean who had been their teacher. The plain stone with her name carved in it commemorated the Jean Grey who gave her life at Alkali Lake, not the one that burst from its depths months later. Kitty's eyes were drawn to the left-most tombstone in her sketch - Jean's tomb and the only one with a body underneath it.

_The sketch!_ Kitty's mind cried at her suddenly. _Rogue wasn't there! Rogue wasn't the sixth! Colossus! Piotr!_ "He was number six!" Kitty told her reflection, feeling that overjoyed sense of completion that accompanies a breakthrough. And this was a big breakthrough, because suddenly everything came back to her in a rush. Piotr teaching her to draw, shooing Jimmy away when she was uncomfortable, getting overly defensive of her in the Danger Room.

_"Sometimes you just get so centered on one person, you don't really notice other people," _Jimmy had said.

And ironically, as he was saying it, Piotr had been there looking at her and she had been so wrapped up in Bobby that she hadn't even noticed him. Other times when he had been there, silent and unseen, came back to her now too. He was there at Alcatraz, number six. When Stryker attacked the school, Piotr had been the one to round up the students who escaped and keep them hidden. He had found her and a few others hiding in one of the secret tunnels and reunited them with the larger group of escapees.

Perhaps most importantly though, Piotr had been there at the professor's memorial. Kitty was always so concerned with who was sitting on her left, that she never really thought about Colossus sitting stoically on her right. She had been looking the wrong way. All those times she'd been looking in the opposite direction, all she had to do was turn her head to see what she'd never seen before.

She turned her head now, half expecting to see Piotr in her doorway, but it was empty. Kitty stood up and went in search of him. It didn't matter that she didn't know where he was or what to say when she found him, she just couldn't sit there anymore. She finally saw the whole picture and when she found him, this time she would actually _see_ him.

Colossus shouldn't have been hard to find. A 6'6'' painter with muscles that looked hard as steel, even when he wasn't powered up, stood out in any crowd. Kitty found it incredible that she had never really noticed him before and even more unbelievable that she couldn't find him now. In fact, it was such a nice day again that the hallways were mostly deserted and the first person she ran into was Rogue.

"Hey Ro..._Marie_, d'you know where Pete is?"

Rogue looked a little surprised that Kitty was talking to her, since the two girls mostly avoided eachother. She also looked a little skeptical and said slowly, "He's downstairs...In the Danger Room..."

"Oh no! It's five already?!" Kitty hadn't even realized the time. She was late for practice. "Thanks Rogue! Bye!" Kitty started to sprint, but then skidded to a stop and turned back. "Hey Marie? I'm sorry."

Marie scanned her face and apparently decided Kitty was being sincere, because she nodded and actually smiled. Then she said, "Oh, Kitty, there's a faster way down there you know," and pointed at the floor.

Kitty looked down at the perfectly polished oak floors, then back up at Rogue. "Oh, right!" Kitty said. She grinned and dropped through the floor.

Bobby said something about her being late, but only jokingly because it was usually him running in after five o'clock. Logan grumbled something as usual and Storm ushered them into the Danger Room. Beast had to be at the UN today, so he wasn't there and Storm was in a little worse mood because of it.

"Ok, we'll be working in pairs today," Storm explained as the Danger Room created a forest scene around them. "The goal is to find Logan. The first pair to reach him wins. Kitty, you're with Bobby. Colossus, with me."

Kitty opened her mouth to object, but four walls materialized to surround her and Bobby. "Great," Kitty muttered.

"Are you gonna be ok with this?" Bobby asked.

Kitty pulled her hair back and waited for the walls to disappear. They had to wait five minutes to let Logan get into the forest or she would have just phased through the barrier.

"I didn't know Storm was going to put us together or I would've said something. I guess she just didn't want me and Pete to get into another fight."

"He was only angry because I almost got hurt. And I don't mind being your partner, I just really need to talk to Pete."

"You...but..." Bobby looked uncomfortable again. "You're not mad at me?"

The walls dropped and Kitty and Bobby automatically started into the forest without missing a beat in their conversation. "No, I'm not mad," Kitty answered truthfully. She wouldn't have been able to say that yesterday. "You've got Rogue and I've got..." Kitty pushed him out of the way of a flying sawblade and then dropped to the ground next to him to avoid the next dozen that sliced through the air.

"Got a plan?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah." Kitty took his hand and they sank underground, coming up a few feet away.

"Next time you're going to phase us underground, warn me first!" Bobby complained half-heartedly.

Kitty gave him a mock salute and grinned, then saw a new batch of blades headed their way. "Warning!" she shouted before grabbing his hand and pulling him back underground. They came up behind a tree and Bobby rolled his eyes at her.

"Oh yeah," he said sarcastically, "that was _much_ better."

"Ok, I've got a real plan then. It's a heat-seeking blade launcher, so just ice up, walk over there, and shatter it."

"You're sure it's heat-seeking?"

Kitty shrugged. "Pretty sure."

"Ok." Bobby iced up and strolled out from behind the tree. No blades fired at him. He found the blade launcher half-hidden in a tree, covered it with ice, and kicked it so it shattered. "Ok, let's go."

"You know," Kitty said conversationally when they were back on their way, "I think it would be fun to go ice skating. You and Rogue and me. And maybe Piotr."

"Ice skating?" Bobby said skeptically.

"Yeah, Jimmy wanted me to go yesterday, but I...didn't want to go. But don't you think it would be fun to see Colossus trying to ice skate."

Bobby stopped suddenly and Kitty stopped too, thinking he'd seen something. But instead he asked slowly, "Kitty, what'd you want to talk to Pete about?"

"Nothing," she said a little too quickly. Bobby just stared at her and waited for a real answer. "I don't know, ok? I just wanted to talk to him for a second."

Lightning flashed to their right and a few of the trees toppled with a resounding thud. Apparently, Storm and Colossus were having some trouble. Kitty and Bobby glanced at eachother. If they kept going, they could find Logan first and win the mission. The ground shook again and lightning started tearing through the room wildly. Without a word, Kitty and Bobby took off to the right. Storm didn't let loose this much power, especially not in a training session.

Logan fell into a sprint next to them a few feet from the commotion and the three of them burst into a clearing a couple minutes later. It looked like a war zone. A thick storm cloud hung over the clearing pouring rain so hard it had battered the simulated grass into mud. Colossus seemed to have torn a few trees out of the ground before the dirt softened enough for his heavy metal body to sink into and he was now stuck waist-deep in the center of the clearing. Storm was nowhere to be seen.

Without thinking, Kitty shot straight into the mud to try to free Colossus. She made it about halfway before her boots picked up too much mud for her to lift. She phased out of her boots and waded through the mud the rest of the way.

"What happened?!" Kitty shouted over the rain when she reached Piotr.

"Storm got trapped beneath a tree. I couldn't get to her because of the blades..."

"Ok, let's get you out of here first."

Piotr shook his head. "Get Storm. She's claustrophobic."

Well that explained the panicked lightning. Kitty nodded and waded over to the tree Piotr had indicated. Storm was barely visible through the mud and at her level of panic, she didn't hear Kitty scream her name.

"Storm!" Kitty yelled over the rain. The clouds started swirling menacingly above them. "STORM!" The clouds funneled toward the ground, ripping up trees like they were nothing and Piotr was stuck right in its path. This wasn't like getting hit by a Danger Room weapon; if that tornado hit him, Colossus would get more than a headache. Kitty made the decision to abandon Storm without second thoughts. She wouldn't have gotten through to her anyway and Piotr was sunk chest deep in mud in the way of a tornado.

"Kitty!" Bobby bellowed from the edge of the clearing. "Where's Storm?!"

She didn't answer. She didn't even hear him over the sound of her own panic as Piotr slipped further into the ground. He was slipping faster because he was still powered up, but if he powered down he would have been crushed by the weight of the mud, so he really didn't have a choice. Even as she was moving toward him, Kitty knew she wouldn't make it in time. When she was just a foot from him, his head disappeared and she dove after him.

What happened next was a blur of mud and steel. Kitty remembered phasing through the ground and she remembered catching a glimpse of silver in the sea of brown. Some part of her realized that the tornado would be right over them when she resurfaced and then she reached him and wrapped her hands around his forearm. She panicked when he didn't react to her and thought she might have been too late.

Tugging as hard as she could, Kitty phased them both back toward the surface. The problem arose when she reached the surface and had nowhere stable to go. She couldn't stay phased, but every time she unphased to rest, they sank back down into the mud. It was like drowning and she was sure Piotr had already suffocated. The third time resurfacing, two hands reached through her before she unphased. Bobby pulled her and Piotr onto an ice bridge he'd made that cracked a little under Piotr's weight, but thankfully held.

"Where's Logan?" Kitty yelled. She winced at how loud her own voice was and then realized that the wind and rain had died down. The tornado was gone too.

"He went to help Storm," Bobby explained, pointing to where Logan had pulled Storm out from under the tree and was hugging her in his lap to calm her down. "We should get Pete to the infirmary; he doesn't look too good."

Kitty nodded numbly. Piotr had just powered down and she couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. Bobby slid them out on a sheet of ice, even though Logan would probably yell at him later when it melted and the floors were all wet. In matters of life and death, those things didn't matter.

---

A/N: I won't make you wait long for the last part. Just a couple days for me to reread it for errors. Thanks for your patience and for reading! It is appreciated!

--X


	4. Seeing

Dedicated to: everyone who read What We Don't See. Thanks! The hit count alone has made my week! Special thanks to those who reviewed/will review.

A/N: the Finale...

Disclaimer: the X-Men are the property of Marvel Comics and the movies belong to Fox. I am not a part of Marvel or Fox, so I own nothing.

**What We Don't See**

Angel wasn't in the infirmary, so as soon as Bobby helped Kitty heave Piotr onto a table, he went to look for him. Kitty, meanwhile, fell into her training without thinking about it. She couldn't think, but she could go through the motions. Check his vitals.

_He's not breathing_, Kitty panicked, even though she'd already guessed it. He'd probably taken in a lungful of mud. _CPR, _Kitty's training told her, _you have to do CPR._

Robotically, she did what she was trained to do. This was drilled into them as X-Men since they got hurt so often in their line of work. Angel had taught them all the procedure. Since Jean died, Angel had taken over the infirmary and, even though he wasn't a doctor like Jean had been, he did well at keeping them all alive. Hopefully that wouldn't change today.

Kitty was performing mouth-to-mouth again when Piotr finally responded to it. He gagged once, then turned his head to the side and coughed up all the mud he had choked down. Breathing hard, Piotr tried to sit up, but Kitty put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Angel's on his way, stay here."

"Storm?" he croaked.

"Logan's taking care of her."

"And you?"

Kitty offered him a small smile. "I'm ok now." That was when they both realized her hand was still on his shoulder, even though he'd given up on moving. She blushed and pulled it away quickly. "Sorry."

"You dove in after me?"

"Of course."

An uneasy silence stretched between them until Kitty decided not to wait for Angel and got up to check Piotr's vitals. The pulse in his wrist seemed fine, but it would have been better to check the pulse in his neck. She also needed to hook him up to the heart rate monitor, but didn't know how to ask him to take off his shirt. She finally just stood there awkwardly while he gazed at her.

"Found him!" Bobby announced as he burst into the room with Angel.

Kitty jumped with a start and fled the room to let Angel work. She pushed past Rogue on her way upstairs and mumbled an apology.

"You're covered in mud. What happened?" Rogue asked.

"Training was bad. Bobby's downstairs if you're looking for him."

"Oh, ok. Thanks. Hey Kitty, you ok?"

"Fine," Kitty mumbled. She robotically trudged upstairs, took a shower, and dressed. She was taking her uniform downstairs to be washed when Rogue and Bobby found her again.

"Liar," Rogue said.

"Huh?"

"You said you were fine. Why didn't you tell me Pete got hurt?"

"I _was_ fine," Kitty insisted. "_Pete's_ the one that got hurt."

Rogue smiled knowingly and took Kitty's mud-caked uniform from her. Bobby said, "Go talk to him, Kitty. He's worried about you."

"But I told him I was fine."

"Just go talk to him," Rogue said a little impatiently.

"He's still down in the infirmary," Bobby said. "Angel wants to keep him there overnight just in case, but he should be fine. They're giving him some privacy right now, so the infirmary's empty."

"What about Storm?"

"She was more freaked out than actually hurt. Angel said she didn't need to stay down there."

"He actually told her to get away from the school for a while so she's not so on edge," Rogue added.

"It only makes the fear worse if her nerves are shot."

"Logan took her out for ice cream or something."

Kitty looked between them at their encouraging smiles. Rogue, in particular, surprised Kitty. Not because she was being nice, but because she was being nice to _Kitty_. She must not have felt threatened anymore and that was good, because Kitty thought she might like to have another friend, especially considering what she was about to do. This could go badly and then she would be really grateful to have a girl friend to talk to.

_Maybe it won't be bad_, Kitty thought hopefully. _Maybe he'll like me too._

She wasn't too hopeful though. Liking Bobby had turned out badly, who was to say the same thing wouldn't happen with Piotr? So Kitty walked cautiously down to the infirmary and knocked lightly on the open door before entering.

"Kitty?" Piotr asked. The lights were off in the room, but the hall lights were on behind her, so he could only make out her silhouette.

"Yeah, hi," she said. She left the lights off, in case he had a headache, and made her way hesitantly over to his cot. The various machines and monitors gave off enough light to see by once her eyes adjusted. "How're you feeling?"

He shrugged. "Better. I don't think I need to be kept here over night, but I didn't want to worry Storm."

"Good idea."

Another uneasy silence followed, with only the steady beep of machinery to keep away the deafening noiselessness. When they finally did speak, it was awkwardly at the same time.

"Kitty-"

"Pete-"

"Go ahead."

"No, what were you gonna say?"

"Nothing, please go ahead."

Kitty shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "You know that picture you drew of me and Jimmy yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what he was saying?"

"No..." Piotr said slowly.

"Well it had a lot to do with what you were saying later about missing something because you don't see it. He said that when you focus on something so much, you don't see what's around it, like not seeing the flowers around the graves." Kitty was babbling now and she knew it, so she shut up for a second.

"Ok..." Piotr said, obviously trying very hard to follow her here. He wasn't quite getting the connection though and that was mostly Kitty's fault. She wasn't being terribly clear on the matter and then she tried to be and she only made it worse.

She started to explain, "Like with Bobby -"

"Oh," Piotr intejected flatly, "Bobby."

_Crap, no._ "Wait, that's not -"

"It's ok," he interrupted blandly. "You are interested in him. I don't think it's particularly smart, but I guess you can't help it. It doesn't seem fair to Marie though -"

"No!" Kitty was on her feet now, standing over his cot angrily. He blinked in surprise and Kitty realized that her hands were balled into fists at her sides. Slowly, she lowered herself back into her chair and pulled her knees up to her chest. "I'm sorry," she muttered, getting up to leave. "You're hurt, I shouldn't be yelling. This was a stupid idea anyway. I'll let you get some rest. Sorry."

"Wait."

Kitty paused in the doorway and heard the cot creak. When she turned around, Piotr was unpeeling the wires from his chest and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Kitty rushed over before he tried to stand. "Lay back down. Angel'll kill me if you break something because of me."

Pete didn't listen exactly. He didn't try to stand, but he didn't lie back down either. He remained sitting and Kitty couldn't help noticing that he'd changed clothes since she brought him in. His muddy uniform had been replaced by a pair of comfortable-looking gray sweatpants. And he was shirtless. He had to be, of course, so Angel could stick all the wires to his chest. Kitty wasn't complaining.

"Are you ok, Kitty?"

She snapped her eyes up to his face and nodded shakily. "Yeah, sure." Kitty suddenly wanted to take a step back, because she was standing a little close to him, but she didn't want him to take it the wrong way.

Before she could make up her mind, he said, "I'm sorry for talking about Bobby like that. I was out of line."

"No, you were right." Kitty let her shoulders relax a little. "I wish you would have said it earlier; it would have saved me a lot of time."

"A lot of time?"

"Figuring it out. Took me long enough to stop focusing on him and editing out everything else. I didn't mean to, I swear. I really can't believe I didn't see it sooner. I guess I was just looking the wrong way."

"Kitty," Pete said as patiently as he could, "what are you talking about?"

He was cute when he was confused, so Kitty was a little slow getting her answer out, but the look on his face afterward was even better. "You," she said simply.

Something like hope flickered in his face before he returned to being confused. He was understandably a little hesitant to jump to her conclusion here, in case he was wrong. After all, just yesterday she'd been crying over Bobby. "What about me?"

Now Kitty stepped right up to the cot. Even standing, she still had to look up to look into his eyes. Clearly and slowly, stressing every word, she said, "I see you."

Her hand slipped into his the way Rogue's had been in Bobby's just yesterday. Piotr's other hand slid around her waist and pulled her closer until he could bend down to kiss her, which he did quickly and lingeringly.

---

A/N: Well that's it. Be on the lookout for the sequel (hopefully just a one-shot, but possibly two or three), Triple Scoop, coming soon! Thanks again for reading/reviewing!

--X


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